1.    Democrats for Education Reform (DFER)
  2.    Democratic Party Platform of 1892
  3.    A New Kind of Local Control
  4.    A Vision of Students Today
  5.    Editorial - A School Board Should Be the Boss

Democrats for Education Reform (DFER)
DFER Education Warrior: NY Sen. Malcolm Smith

New York Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith was a proud supporter of public charter schools long before it became popular to do so within the Democratic Party. A true believer in the economic principle that competition drives innovation, results, and excellence, Smith not only has strongly supported charter school legislation in New York, he has worked to create and support schools himself. Smith is the founder of Peninsula Preparatory Academy (along with Congressman Greg Meeks), the first public charter school in the Rockaways, and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Merrick Academy-Queens Public Charter School in Jamaica Queens.

To read more go to the Democrats for Education Reform web site.

History can teach us many things about ourselves and the times in which we live. If we can learn the lessons of history, we can create a better future for ourselves and our children. Below is an example of a worthy plank in any political party platform. As a matter of fact, it was part of a national Democratic party platform from 1892. The “highest type of American citizenship and the best government” is insured by respecting and not interfering with  “parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children.” As a matter of fact the Democratic National Convention of 1892 was opposed to state interference with these rights.
 

“The Democratic Convention met at Chicago on June 21, [1892]. William C. Owens, of Kentucky, was the temporary chairman, and William L. Wilson, of West Virginia,
the permanent president. The platform was reported on the evening of June 22. As adopted it was as follows : —

“SEC. 17. Popular education being the only safe basis of popular suffrage, we recommend to the several States most liberal appropriations for the public schools. Free common schools are the fostering care of the Democratic party, which favors every means of increasing intelligence. Freedom of education, being an essential of civil and religious liberty as well as a necessity for the development of intelligence, must not be interfered with under any pretext whatever. We are opposed to State interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children, as an infringement of the fundamental Democratic doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government.”

Citation: Democratic Party, and Edward B. Dickinson. Official Proceedings of the National Democratic Convention, Held in Chicago, Ill., June 21st, 22nd and 23rd, 1892. Chicago: Cameron, Amberg & Co, 1892.

The premise of Act 60, The Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1997, (and the Vermont Supreme Court Brigham decision) was that a student, irrespective of the town of residence, would have the same opportunity for educational success if the voters approving a school budget had the same taxable resources available for all students.

Although many of us have questioned the validity of that premise over the past ten years, I offered an alternative proposal during my last term to equalize resources on a countywide basis instead of a statewide basis.  It was my belief that voters would respond more favorably to sharing their property tax base if it was done on a more local basis than across the entire state.  Hence the countywide school district approach.

[snip]

The greatest flaw in the statewide property tax system is the voters’ inability to connect to the public school system where their tax dollars are being spent.  To be supportive they need to touch, see, and hear their tax dollars at work. 

[snip]

Our counties are small.  It’s time to define “local” as a region of the state, such as a county, but more than just an individual town.  It’s time for Manchester to have a vested interest in Bennington’s success; for Stowe to partner with Hyde Park, and for Hartford to realize it has more in common with Woodstock than with Lebanon.  This type of regional cooperation will not only improve education and lower costs, it will also strengthen the economic vitality of every region.

The time for change has come.  Let’s move the discussion forward.

The full article can be found here at Vermont Tiger
At the end of the article you can post comments.

This YouTube movie, “A Vision of Students Today,”  was sent to me by a Vermont college student. The presentation of the information is moving. The students use of statistics show that they do a lot of reading, writing, and learning but not in the traditional formats. The format that they are paying people to force them to learn in does not even come close to the natural methods that they use to learn and communicate. Here are some of the statistics found within the script of the movie. 

“...My average class size is 115. 18% of my teachers know my name. I complete 49% of the readings assigned to me. Only 26% … relative to my life. I buy hundred dollar textbooks that I never open. My neighbor paid for class but never comes. I will read 8 books this year. 2300 web pages and 1281 facebook profiles. I will write 42 pages for class this semester And over 500 pages of email...”

Prof Wesch writes this in the introduction to the movie:

“This video was created by myself and the 200 students enrolled in ANTH 200: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, Spring 2007. It began as a brainstorming exercise, thinking about how students learn, what they need to learn for their future, and how our current educational system fits in. We created a Google Document to facilitate the brainstorming exercise, which began with the following instructions:

“… the basic idea is to create a 3 minute video highlighting the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. We already know some things from previous research (and if you know of any interesting statistics, please list them along with the source). Others we will need to find out by doing a class survey. Please add whatever you want to know or present.”

Editorial - A School Board Should Be the Boss

A school board is the boss. At least they should be. Why? Because they create the budgets that are funded by the taxpayers. As such, they have the right to expect certain things from their employees, the teachers and principals. Unions exist or should exist to make sure that the employer does not take unfair advantage of the employee. What happens when the union gets the upper hand? What happens to the taxpayer footing the bill? Negotiation of teacher's contracts can be a difficult process for all involved.

These links lead to information about one side of contract negotiations between a teacher's union and a school board. The school board is waiting to comment until the fact finding report is released in November, while the union, South West Vermont Education Association, has already posted their comments on their web site . The old 2004-2007 teacher's contract is located at the Southern Vermont Supervisory Union's web site.

These negotiations have even made it into the newspapers. John Waller from the Bennington Banner wrote a news story about the negotiations titled, “Teachers air contract woe’s.”

As you read through this information, you see comments like, “the board's desire to control everything we do or participate in” and “they [the board] want the right to establish and modify the beginning and ending times, length, schedule and structure of each teacher s standard work day.” 

Isn't this the job of a boss - to set standards for the workday? A certain level of freedom should be given to the employee because that makes for a happier employee but the employer does needs to set the parameters.

Another point of contention for the union is the possibility of eliminating or downsizing positions. Nevertheless, why should the union be anticipating unjust reductions in their ranks? Don't they know that the student population is shrinking? Some downsizing could be required to make education more affordable.

These contracts are about jobs, not students. Teacher contracts can help to keep the working conditions of the teachers in line with a quality work place, but the taxpayers have to be able to afford the bill. The final goal remains, we hope, to provide an excellent education for the individual student at the lowest possible cost.

Since unions are all about the teachers, school boards are counted on to pull their own weight and make sure that every family can be confident that their hard earned money is well spent. It is not an easy job.

We do!  Please consider a gift to Vermonters for Better Education, the publisher of the weekly Vermont Education Report, Vermont's ONLY continual source of education news. Send donations to: VBE, PO Box 72, Woodbury, VT 05681. VBE is a nonprofit organization and contributions are tax-deductible.

The VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT is published by Vermonters for Better Education PO Box 72 Woodbury, VT 05681 - 802-472-5491. The Vermont Education Report may be reprinted with the editor's permission. For more information contact: VBE@comcast.net or visit us on the web: http://www.schoolreport.com

VERMONTERS FOR BETTER EDUCATION is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to enlist parents and the public at large in achieving quality educational opportunities for all the children of Vermont by monitoring the state of education in Vermont; promoting the value of educational freedoms for all parents; and giving parents the evaluative tools with which to identify excellence.

Retta Dunlap, executive director
VBE@comcast.net